


The Wine Doesn't Keep Me Warm at Night

by 28daysofjune



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/M, Gen, M/M, Multi, in which Eponine is a bad ass businesswoman, more Amis to come later, this is the ahem REAL start of R's art career
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-06-03
Updated: 2014-06-03
Packaged: 2018-02-03 06:20:21
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,132
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1734245
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/28daysofjune/pseuds/28daysofjune
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Grantaire is a struggling artist with a single friend, besides his bottles of alcohol. By complete chance, he ends up with a group of amazing friends, a possible career with his useless liberal arts degree, and a strange and slightly painful fixation on a sun god.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Wine Doesn't Keep Me Warm at Night

**Author's Note:**

> I really needed to get the Les Mis feels out, so this is my outlet. I intend on making this a bunch of related chapter things, but making a series was too confusing for my small technological knowledge, so please bear with me while I try to figure this (and this website?) out! As my stupid tags say, there will be more characters and character relationships later, so stay tuned :) P.S, useless liberal arts degrees are my favorite degrees.

It was not a rare occurrence for Grantaire to wake up hung over, still more drunk than sober. It was, however, quite impossible that he awaken before one or two in the afternoon, so it was with great irritation that he picked up his cellphone at 10:16 A.M that day. His temples were throbbing, his body was covered in alcohol sweat, and he was utterly disoriented for a few seconds.

"What?" Grantaire croaked, his voice hoarse and cracking.

"R?"

"What? Who're you?"

There was an exasperated sigh. "Your only friend, Eponine, fuckface. Do you still not have my number saved? We text all the time!"

"Oh, yeah, right. Right, I just... I figure out who you are by the context of the conversation," he replied, chuckling lowly at the lameness of his reasoning.

"You're impossible. Anyway, my boss asked me if I could do a spotlight on up-and-coming local artists-"

"Boss as in Shirley?"

"... what? Sherry, you mean? Ugh, that isn't relev-"

"She's hot."

Another exasperated sigh. "Are you drunk right now?"

Grantaire giggled in the manliest way his raspy voice would allow.

"Oh, for fuck's sake," Eponine murmured. "Get yourself together, I'll be there in ten."

With that, Eponine hung up, leaving Grantaire drunk and strangely hung over at the same time. He considered simply changing out of his clothes, but then remembered he hadn't showered in a few days and probably smelled awful. Without a further thought, Grantaire flung his shirt off and began leaving a clothing trail across the floor from his room to the bathroom, where he showered promptly. The heat was suffocating despite it being September, so Grantaire showered with cold water and emerged less drunk, but feeling like a sad, wet dog. He slipped on a wrinkled pair of jeans and a shirt displaying the tongue logo of The Rolling Stones. He was in the middle of toweling off his dark curls when there was a sharp knock on his door.

"You know the lock doesn't work," Grantaire called loudly, pulling up his pants to a more decent position.

"Right, I keep forgetting you live in abnormal conditions," came Eponine's phantom voice, muffled through the door. There was a dull thump before the door finally gave way, revealing a thin, tanned girl in black jeans and a black long sleeve. She rubbed her right arm and scowled. "How do your shoulders handle that? Jesus..."

Grantaire grinned. "Practice. And how do you not develop heatstroke that way?" He asked, gesturing at her outfit.

"Practice," she echoed with a shrug. "You seem..." She stepped closer to Grantaire, inspecting his strangely clear blue eyes. "... more lucid than what you sounded like over the phone."

Grantaire grinned wolfishly. "And here I thought you were coming near me to do something else."

Eponine rolled her eyes, but smirked. "If I didn't know you, I'd take that as an invitation. Anyway, Sherry the Hot was asking around for brand new artists and I told her that you were one."

Eponine and Grantaire had a bit of a history. They both started university in the same year and had a similar taste for art, except that Grantaire enjoyed the actual practice of it while Eponine mainly wrote about it. Still, they had a variety of art classes together and had developed an interesting bond in which they sometimes hung out and sometimes made out, only to end the latter because neither of them felt particularly romantically interested in the other. Now, a few years later, what had emerged from that was what Eponine thought of as a "disturbingly close tie with an idiot from my art class," to which Grantaire grinned cheekily because he know they were equally exclusive when it came to forming relationships. To say they were friends that knew each other very well was an understatement.

"And...?" Grantaire asked, rolling his eyes at the fact that Eponine had called him an 'artist,' as if she didn't know better.

"She didn't believe me, until I reminded her that the vast majority of full-time drunks are part-time artists, and we can change that full-time both," she said with a mysterious sparkle in her eyes.

"So, you're here because...?"

"God, Grantaire, you really are thick," said Eponine. "I'm interviewing you for the fucking art exposition."

Grantaire stared blankly at her, blue eyes melting into brown. "You... what? Wait, The Apple's art show? The... the annual one?"

Eponine grinned. She wrote for the city's most famous arts magazine, pretentiously or artistically named "The Apple," and the majority of the people presented in their art expo became recognized thanks to the large amounts of talent-seekers that arrived there. In short, this was a big fucking deal.

"Ep... fuck's sake, 'Ponine, you didn't..." Grantaire whispered before exploding into a grin and a loud, "YOU FUCKING DID IT! You... you fucking goddess from above!" He shouted, grinning and enveloping her into a bear hug that lifted her feet off the cigarette-burned carpet.

Eponine laughed one of her rare real laughs. "I fucking did it? YOU did! I just described your work to Sherry and she said she wanted an interview ASAP so you can start painting all of your works for the expo in November. You know, I think you actually have a really good chance of being chosen as the artist spotlight."

Grantaire looked like a child whose birthday had come early. "Eponine, really. I can't thank you enough. You just MADE me. Quite literally. How can I ever-"

"Yeah, yeah, whatever," she said with a dismissive wave of her hand, but her bright eyes betrayed her. "Pay me back in alcohol and I'll call it even. Anyway, we should really get this interview going, if you're not busy right now?"

"No, no, of course not. I'll just go get some wine and-"

"Oh, and before I forget! R, you've really got to get your, um, professionalism in order. Sherry is going to be expecting a portfolio of your work soon, and you're absolutely going to have to meet deadlines, I know you suck at that, but she only ever really deals with big artists and I just really want you to be spotlighted, you're just really talented and I..." She stopped to take a breath, looking very consternated, slightly pleading eyes focused on Grantaire. He smiled in what he hoped was a reassuring manner.

"Don't worry, Ep. I won't fuck this up. I can be professional, I just choose to be drunk all the time because it's more exciting that way," he said, smirking. "In fact, I'm so professional that I'll even use my crystal wine glasses," he continued, flouncing over to the kitchen in an overly dramatic, regal fashion. 

"You have crystal wine glasses?" Came Eponine's voice, sounding slightly impressed.

He grinned.

**Author's Note:**

> I know it starts off uneventful, but I promise I have things in mind. Please give feedback, and thanks for reading! :)


End file.
